Malcolm X: Identity politics is the way to get shit done.
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Identity politics will lead us into a frightening racial nightmare.
Both are correct. (Previously.) What should be done?
Given its downsides, it seems identity politics ought to be used as a political weapon of last resort. Is that what people are doing in practice? It seems not.
Or descriptively instead of normatively, if people are resorting to identity politics, there are bigger things wrong with society.
Or maybe there's nothing wrong; maybe identity politics is expected behavior, a rational strategy, for (iterated) zero-sum games. And if we've reached a point such that things a zero-sum game, it's expected to see being used weapons of last resort. Is reaching a point that things are a zero-sum game a sign of bigger things wrong with society? In a positive-sum game, one still needs to distribute (or redistribute) the surplus somehow, and that subtask is zero-sum.
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